Why we hate gamers who can't admit they suck

If you're terrible and you know it, clap your hands!

We love amusing new words, and one of our favorites was created to describe the worst gamers on the planet: terribads. We wish we could high-five the glorious asshole who came up with that word. We can tell from the utter disdain that oozes from the cracks between those letters that whoever made that word up is clearly good at playing games. Don’t worry: you don’t have to be a pro to join us in hating the worst of the worst gamers, because they make digital life miserable for even the average and slightly-below-average among us. Warning: it’s possible you are one of these terribads. Shit, wait a second, what if we’re one of them?

Above: THE COGNITIVE DISSONANCE IS TOO POWERFU-asfplplflflflfl

Unfortunately, the goop at the bottom of the barrel is scientifically proven to not know that it sucks. This phenomenon is known as…

The Dunning-Kruger
Effect (again)

We’ve talked about this before, so we’ll make this point brief. Basically, some scientists did a study and found that across the board, whenever human beings are tested in some area of competence, the bottom 12% always believe that they are above average in ability. They’re so awful at a particular skill that they’re incapable of realizing their suckage, and they can’t even recognize the difference between their skill level and that of the best in that area.

Above: And this is what they look like. Note: we’re going to have a lot of pictures of people who look like morons

So you can see how this plays out for gaming, but we might as well take some time to make fun of these dipshits in detail. It’s because we hate them so very, very much. They deserve our hate precisely because…

They%26rsquo;re
idiots in balance discussions

Believe it or not, we’ve lurked on enough game forums to the point where we can accurately tell who is good at a game and who isn’t based purely on the tone in which someone writes his or her comments. Here’s an example:

Commenter #1: “The Super Mega Launcher is so underpowered it’s a joke. The bullet fires so slowly, by the time it gets where you’re aiming, your opponent is half a mile away.”

Commenter #2: “The gun doesn’t suck, you do. It’s called leading the target.”

Yes, good players are often cruel and uncaring bastards toward the bad players, but what do you expect? It’s infuriating to hear whiners complain about some game aspect when you know it’s fine because you kill opponents like crazy with it. And it’s never a small annoyance, because the dummies who don’t know that they suck always complain the loudest and most frequently. They just can’t figure out why the developers won’t listen to their huge list of nerfs, so dammit, they’ll repost until the beaten-horses come home.

Above: Professor of Balanceology says, “I know I’m right because I’ve played this game for TWO WHOLE MONTHS”

What changes from irritating to downright sickening for us is when these whiners get together and make it seem like there’s a real problem when there isn’t – and then the developers actually listen to them. Typically when this happens, an entire play style will be destroyed because the terribads always whine about what beats them instead of learning how to deal with it.

It’s possible for skillful, competitive games to become watered-down shadows of their former selves as devs cave to the crummy players. Eventually the good players will leave when the game becomes dumbed-down, and then the skill-less have only themselves to play with, and even then they’ll find things to whine about.

They falsely accuse
better players of being cheaters

The better you are at a game, the more you’ll get accused of being a cheater. We’re not super great at most games, so sadly the cheater accusations we’ve received have been occasional at best. We say sadly because it’s amusing and flattering for someone to think you’re cheating when you’re not – it means you were so good that you appeared to be breaking the game. Some people don’t like being falsely accused of anything, though, so when the incompetents whip out the cheater flag, it gets some gamers’ blood boiling, and we can’t blame them. It’s especially obnoxious when the deluded dickbags pepper their accusations with obscenity (irony of this sentence fully understood). When it comes down to it, though, it’s the basis of the accusation that’s most irritating: it comes from the failure’s belief that he can’t possibly suck at the game, so therefore whoever beats him must be cheating. This line of thinking takes mountains of self-aggrandizing delusion to pull off.

Above: “I am satisfied knowing that all those goddamn hackers who beat me will get what they deserve”

This is a problem that spans more than just a simple nuisance. These simpletons actually make it easier for real cheaters to get away with what they’re doing. It works like this: a handful of dumbasses go around accusing everyone that beats them of cheating, reporting those people to community service representatives. Those CSRs are often required by their companies to investigate all reports of cheating. So you can see how the overly-sensitive buffoons are wasting man-hours that could be spent tracking down the real bad guys. Thanks a lot, you skill-vacuums, you’re contributing to the very injustice your inflated heads perceive everywhere.

Above: THE COGNITIVE DISSONANCE IS TOO POWERFU-asfplplflflflfl

Unfortunately, the goop at the bottom of the barrel is scientifically proven to not know that it sucks. This phenomenon is known as…

The Dunning-Kruger
Effect (again)

We’ve talked about this before, so we’ll make this point brief. Basically, some scientists did a study and found that across the board, whenever human beings are tested in some area of competence, the bottom 12% always believe that they are above average in ability. They’re so awful at a particular skill that they’re incapable of realizing their suckage, and they can’t even recognize the difference between their skill level and that of the best in that area.

Above: And this is what they look like. Note: we’re going to have a lot of pictures of people who look like morons

So you can see how this plays out for gaming, but we might as well take some time to make fun of these dipshits in detail. It’s because we hate them so very, very much. They deserve our hate precisely because…

They%26rsquo;re
idiots in balance discussions

Believe it or not, we’ve lurked on enough game forums to the point where we can accurately tell who is good at a game and who isn’t based purely on the tone in which someone writes his or her comments. Here’s an example:

Commenter #1: “The Super Mega Launcher is so underpowered it’s a joke. The bullet fires so slowly, by the time it gets where you’re aiming, your opponent is half a mile away.”

Commenter #2: “The gun doesn’t suck, you do. It’s called leading the target.”

Yes, good players are often cruel and uncaring bastards toward the bad players, but what do you expect? It’s infuriating to hear whiners complain about some game aspect when you know it’s fine because you kill opponents like crazy with it. And it’s never a small annoyance, because the dummies who don’t know that they suck always complain the loudest and most frequently. They just can’t figure out why the developers won’t listen to their huge list of nerfs, so dammit, they’ll repost until the beaten-horses come home.

Above: Professor of Balanceology says, “I know I’m right because I’ve played this game for TWO WHOLE MONTHS”

What changes from irritating to downright sickening for us is when these whiners get together and make it seem like there’s a real problem when there isn’t – and then the developers actually listen to them. Typically when this happens, an entire play style will be destroyed because the terribads always whine about what beats them instead of learning how to deal with it.

It’s possible for skillful, competitive games to become watered-down shadows of their former selves as devs cave to the crummy players. Eventually the good players will leave when the game becomes dumbed-down, and then the skill-less have only themselves to play with, and even then they’ll find things to whine about.

They falsely accuse
better players of being cheaters

The better you are at a game, the more you’ll get accused of being a cheater. We’re not super great at most games, so sadly the cheater accusations we’ve received have been occasional at best. We say sadly because it’s amusing and flattering for someone to think you’re cheating when you’re not – it means you were so good that you appeared to be breaking the game. Some people don’t like being falsely accused of anything, though, so when the incompetents whip out the cheater flag, it gets some gamers’ blood boiling, and we can’t blame them. It’s especially obnoxious when the deluded dickbags pepper their accusations with obscenity (irony of this sentence fully understood). When it comes down to it, though, it’s the basis of the accusation that’s most irritating: it comes from the failure’s belief that he can’t possibly suck at the game, so therefore whoever beats him must be cheating. This line of thinking takes mountains of self-aggrandizing delusion to pull off.

Above: “I am satisfied knowing that all those goddamn hackers who beat me will get what they deserve”

This is a problem that spans more than just a simple nuisance. These simpletons actually make it easier for real cheaters to get away with what they’re doing. It works like this: a handful of dumbasses go around accusing everyone that beats them of cheating, reporting those people to community service representatives. Those CSRs are often required by their companies to investigate all reports of cheating. So you can see how the overly-sensitive buffoons are wasting man-hours that could be spent tracking down the real bad guys. Thanks a lot, you skill-vacuums, you’re contributing to the very injustice your inflated heads perceive everywhere.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

My new approach to play all games on Hard mode straight off the bat has proven satisfying. Sure there is some frustration, but I've decided it's the lesser of two evils when weighed against the boredom of easiness that Normal difficulty has become in the era of casual gaming.